I’ve been thinking about those numbers a lot lately, and
what they might mean, and how they tie in to the election and re-election of Barack
Obama.
I am going to begin this essay with a discussion of race in
America, parts of which I have addressed in my blogs before (so this part may be
familiar to some of you.)
CONSTRUCTING RACE
Colonial America was built around a racialized hierarchy,
which was ultimately a hierarchy of power.
A hierarchy is a structure. If you wanted to rise to the top
of that structure you had to be a WASP –a word that was pretty common when I
was growing up in the 70s but isn’t heard that much anymore. WASP stands for
“White Anglo Saxon Protestant.” (You could add the word “male” in there, too.)
In other words, for most of American history, to be accepted at the highest
levels of society you need to be descended from white English people.
As the “W” shows, that structure is racial as well as social. I demonstrate
below a model of the racial hierarchy created in colonial America, which was
the structure Southern culture was based on until the Civil War. Wealthy white
planters were at the top of the structure, followed by artisans and craftsmen
who would later be referred to as the middle class, then by a large number of
poor whites. Below that is a thin layer –free blacks. There wasn’t a huge
number of them. At the base of the structure were slaves- the foundation on
which the whole culture was laid.
It was explained very succinctly to Massachusetts native
John Quincy Adams by his colleague, South Carolinian John C. Calhoun (who would
later serve as Vice-President to both Adams and Andrew Jackson) in 1820. As
Adams reported, “After this meeting, I walked home with
Calhoun, who said that the principles which I had avowed [that is, liberty and freedom]were just and noble: but that in the
Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they were always understood as
applying only to white men.”
It was not in the best interests of the wealthy planters for poor whites and
blacks to figure out they had anything in common –although in a lot of ways
they had more in common with one another than with the other groups (These are
the same tactics used in the 19th century to prevent blacks and whites from
uniting in labor unions.) Therefore, a line of demarcation was
introduced into the structure:
It was, of course, a color line. Since this is a power structure, and white is
on top, you could also call it a whiteness line. The people at the very top
could tell poor whites: “Hey, maybe you don’t have as much money as us, or
education, or opportunity… but at least you’re on the right side of The Line-
you’re white, just like us, and that means we’re on the same side… and, if
nothing else, you’ll always know you’re better than the people on the bottom
side of the line.” Hence, poor whites in the South –who could not afford
slaves, and probably never would –went out and fought for the right of wealthy
whites to own slaves. Even though slavery meant poor whites had very few job
opportunities. (NOTE: in the mountainous Southern Appalachians, where cotton
could not be grown and there were few slaves, most poor whites supported the
Union.)
One way of demonstrating this is what I like to call “The
Cookie Analogy.” Imagine Southern colonial culture as a plate of 10 cookies…
with the planter class having 8 cookies, poor whites having one, and blacks
having one. The Color Line is the Planter Class’s way of saying to the Poor
White- “Hey, you better watch that black guy, I think he wants your cookie!” in
order to create a false sense of camaraderie while also distracting the Poor
White from thinking about the fact the Planter has almost all the cookies on
the plate.
Another demonstration of how this works can be seen in the sit-com All in
the Family. The character of Archie Bunker is a middle-aged, working class
white man who is a) extremely bigoted and b)extremely upset about the ways the
world he knows is rapidly changing. Archie grew up in an America where -even if
he didn't have much going for him -at least he was better than those
people. That position of security -being on the WASP team -gave him an innate
sense of privilege which the socially progressive movements of the 60s and 70s
threatened.
In essence, a new socio-racial hierarchy was in place in the
U.S. by the late 1800s. Like in the earlier racial hierarchy model from the
antebellum South, there is a line of demarcation that could be called a “line
of whiteness”:
In this model, the farther away an immigrant group is from Northern/Western Europe
–thus the farther away they are from Anglo-Saxon –the less acceptable they are.
Just as in the colonial model, African Americans are on the bottom. Writers and
historians –from W.E.B. Dubois and James Baldwin to Winthrop Jordan –have long
proposed that white identity in America was formed in opposition to black,
using blackness as a defining “other.” I will speak more about that in the
following section. Suffice it to say that for Irish and other immigrant groups
to rise to the level of “white,” they had to also define themselves against the
other end of the racial spectrum and make it clear they were not “black.”
Case in point: The New York Draft Riots of 1863.
The Civil War was raging, and a draft had been instituted on both sides. In New
York, a large number of Irish immigrants were drafted, sometimes shortly after
they got off the boat. At that time, anyone able to pay a substantial fee
didn’t have to serve –which meant that wealthier men didn’t have to be drafted
if they didn’t want to be, whereas poor men had little choice. It was a “rich
man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” This contributed to the anti-draft feeling
in the city. What started as anger directed at draft officers in July, 1863,
quickly escalated into a race riot that lasted for days, with largely Irish
mobs invading the black neighborhoods and killing an untold number of African
Americans (possibly hundreds, although the exact number is not known.) Among
other things, they burned down a colored orphanage. African Americans had little
or nothing to do with Irish immigrants’ situation; the fact they were targeted
shows that the Irish knew where they were on the hierarchy.
As James Baldwin put it in the introduction of his 1985 work The Price of
the Ticket (p. xx):
“…the Irish became white when they got here and began rising in the world,
whereas I became black and began sinking. The Irish, therefore and thereafter…
had absolutely no choice but to make certain I could not menace their safety or
status or identity: and, if I came too close, they could, with the consent of
the governed, kill me.”
W.E.B. Dubois wrote, in his essay “The Soul of White Folk,” that
“[America] aspires to sit among the great nations who arbitrate the fate of
‘lesser breeds without the law’ and she is at times heartily ashamed even of
the large number of ‘new’ white people whom her democracy has admitted to place
and power. Against this surging forward of Irish and German, of Russian Jew,
Slav and ‘dago’ her social bars have not availed, but against Negroes she can
and does take her unflinching and immovable stand... She trains her immigrants
to this despising of ‘niggers’ from the day of their landing, and they carry
and send the news back to the submerged classes in the fatherlands.”
This is how racial hierarchies function. To work your way into the upper
levels, one must show solidarity with the upper levels against those on the
bottom. Another important element is paternalism
; in fact, I would say that paternalism is the oil that greases the
socio-racial hierarchy machine. This brings us back to our earlier discussion
about All in the Family. The son-in-law Michael (or, as Archie called
him, Meathead) was a liberal grad student engaged in many progressive causes,
which was a source of endless arguments with his father-in-law. It was always
evident to the viewer, however -especially when he was interacting with his
(apparently only) black friend -that he had a strong and condescending feeling
of paternalism.
THE PRICE OF THE TICKET
James Baldwin explained that European immigrants “come
through Ellis Island, where Giorgio becomes
Joe, Pappavasiliu becomes Palmer, Evangelos becomes Evans, Goldsmith becomes Smith or Gold, and Avakian becomes
King. So, with a painless change of
name, and in the twinkling of an eye, one becomes a white American… The price
the white American paid for his ticket [My note: that is, entry into the top level of the racial structure] was to
become white.”
Non-black groups –Italians, Irish, Poles, and non-Europeans
(Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, etc.) can “become” white, but –in this racialized power structure
-blacks cannot, because they are the defining other. “White” is the position
above the color line; “white” is defined against the “debased” and “inferior”
other. Thus, being white primarily means not being black. Or, as Baldwin put
it, whites (almost tragically) have no identity of their own, they can only
define themselves as what they are not, as though of all groups they are the
one with “something missing.”
More practically, whiteness is the dominant end of a
racialized, racist power structure. This dominant end sets in motion the
necessary actions to maintain the structure. The purpose of the structure is
for the top to have something to rest upon; in other words, the whole thing is
there so that the dominant group will be able to define itself as the dominant group.
If you are a member of that group, you have –in Baldwin’s
parlance –the ticket in your hand.
You
have certain privileges that come with belonging to the dominant end of the
structure –but you might not even realize it, because those privileges are so
intrinsically a part of who you are, and seem so normal, that you often don’t
recognize that other people don’t have them. Peggy McIntosh has a great article
describing just what some of those privileges are, called
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” The biggest privilege of all, though, is the
one enjoyed by Archie Bunker: knowing that, no matter how tough your life is,
you are part of the dominant group.
And as I mentioned, Archie Bunker felt very threatened in
the early 1970s by the rapid social changes taking place- changes which
threatened to blur the sharply drawn
hierarchy of American culture, and thus threatened the security of his place
atop the structure.
A lot of Americans were talking, after Obama’s election in
2008, about a “post-racial nation.” A black man has been elected president;
racism must be over. A year before that, I had expressed some serious concerns
about the public’s apparent perception that racism was a solved issue,
in an essay I wrote about the events in Jena, Louisiana:
“Do today’s white students believe
that opposing racism is a passé cause? That the Civil Rights Movement occurred
–so long ago, in their eyes –and the monster was slain? Or, worse, that race is
a black problem, to be handled by blacks alone? Because friends, Jena,
Louisiana –like Hurricane Katrina –have proven that racism is alive in America.
Not the subtle, whispered kind practiced by some taxi drivers or store clerks,
but the full-fledged, virulent sort which we are used to seeing only in black
and white newsreels. We may comfort ourselves by saying that we slew that
serpent long ago (I will not dignify it by calling it a dragon); the sibilant
hissing issuing from the shadows of our country says otherwise.”
The election of Barack Obama in 2008, sadly, did not prove
that the serpent was dead –it brought said reptile out into the daylight, as
racism became more obvious, and commonplace, than it had been in decades.
Racial hate groups grew in membership across the country. Seemingly intelligent
people started distributing cartoons of the president with a bone through his
nose, or the first lady eating watermelon, or both of them depicted as apes.
One friend of mine, a lifelong Democrat before that election cycle, sent a
frantic email after Obama’s 2008 victory saying that we had become the United
States of Africa, and that blacks would riot in the streets, and that no white
person’s job would be safe. And this was by no means an isolated incident.
Which brings us to one of those surveys I mentioned at the
outset which I find disturbing. Racism among white people has significantly
increased since 2008. Some people point to that survey and say “See how
divisive this president is!” If he has been divisive, it is a result of who he
is, not what he has done. Obama has been center-left for the most part –one of
the most moderate Democrats on the public stage, the sort of politician who
would once have been described as an Eisenhower Republican. Yet he has been
portrayed by a large (and overwhelmingly white) section of the American public
as a socialist bordering on communism (and the policies pointed to as proof
were based on Republican suggestions and models), as a foreigner, an outsider,
someone who bilked the American people into electing him when he is not
actually American at all. He and his wife have been portrayed as “angry blacks”
and as Muslims (which, in a democracy, should be irrelevant even if it were
true, which it is not.) Several of his opponents have also accused him of being
overly influenced by the “Kenyan ant-colonialist” politics of his father –as though
being “anti-colonialist” was somehow intrinsically bad.
When someone points out how racist that rhetoric is, the
common reply is that the
real racists
are those who are offended by it, including you for bringing it out; that
decrying racism has somehow
become racism.
(See
HERE for my discussion about “reverse-racism.”) These folks insist that
Obama has stoked racial anger –among blacks. It is now white people, they
insist, who are victims.
I think this should be called the “Archie Bunker Syndrome.” A
large section (though by no means all) of White America has become a lot more
open about their suspicion of other races and groups, and fearful that their
privileged position is threatened; that growing rights, and political power,
among people of color automatically translates into less power for the white
majority, threatening to disrupt the whole social structure America was built
on, and that those folks define their identity through. And boy are they
pissed. Does that mean White America has grown more racist? Not really… it
means that the institutional racism that many people tried to suppress in
public, or even hide from themselves, has bubbled to the surface. Not because
such folks are mean and hateful (though obviously some of them are), but
because their sense of self –based on where they are on the hierarchy –is threatened,
and it scares them.
I can’t help thinking about Baldwin’s assertions about
whiteness –that it is a concept defined against other things, and has no true
identity of its own –when I reflect on the 2012 election. Obama –far more so
than in 2008 –was portrayed by many as the dark, evil “other.” 60% of the white
electorate opposed Obama and supported Romney because they approved of Romney’s
–what, exactly? What was Romney running on? He was deliberately vague, refusing
to divulge details about either himself or his plans. Except, of course, that
whatever plan he actually followed would support the interests of the wealthy (“job-creators.”)
In fact, that was the only thing anyone could be sure about in regards to this
chameleon of a man- that his raison d’etre
was to protect privilege.
Romney’s entire campaign message, then, could be nailed down
to two parts. A) Power (and money) should go to those at the top, and B) “Obama
is bad, and I’m not him.” Mitt Romney was the living, breathing embodiment of
critical race theory, whiteness theory, and the racialized power structure I
have described in such detail. He really was the Whitest Man in America.
The presidential election of 2008 left me feeling very
hopeful –but I was not one of those who believed it meant the “end of race.” I
firmly believe that such a thing can only happen when enough people understand
how race was created in this country, and how it works, and then actively
disavow it. I was by no means surprised when racial division in this country
got worse instead of better.
WHY OBAMA’S RE-ELECTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIS ELECTION
I believe, however, that 2012 may be the true turning point
(though certainly not an endpoint.) Romney received 60% of the white vote, and
in fact 95% of those who voted for him were white- his campaign strategy was to
appeal directly to the majority of white people by playing on their fears, an
approach that has worked well for Republicans since Nixon (and, to be fair, for
Democrats before that.) He gambled that if his support among the white majority
was overwhelming enough, it would counteract all the minorities put together. This
was demonstrated in microcosm at the nominating conventions this summer: The
Republican convention had a relative handful of minorities, mostly seated
behind the speakers so the cameras would be sure to catch them, while the
convention floor was, by all accounts, a sea of white (except, of course, for
that black camerawoman who was subjected to racial taunts by people throwing
peanuts at her.) The Democratic convention, in contrast, was like one of those
human rainbows that has become such a cliché. White folks, Latinos, Asians,
African Americans, Native Americans –not a handful of each lost in a white
crowd, but a legitimate blend.
Romney’s gamble failed, as it turned out. Not just racial
and ethnic minorities, but women, young people, blue collar whites from the
industrial Midwest, all participated in a successful coalition to keep Barack
Obama in office. Already, GOP strategists are making comments to the effect
that their party can only survive if they reach out to other groups… cognizant
as they are of the changing electorate in this country (in Reagan’s era, the
white vote was 89% of that electorate; this year it is 72%, down from 74% in
2008, and it will continue to decline.)
I was also pleasantly surprised by some individual incidents
during this election season. The three most racist people I know personally –all
working class white males from the South, and all very close to me by ties of
either blood or affection –all supported Barack Obama this time around, when they
did not do so in 2008. They did so because they believed he had far more
concern for the working class than did Romney, and all admitted they thought he
had done the best anyone could’ve so far with the hand he had been dealt. This
flies in the face of the numbers, of course- Romney’s support in the White
South was overwhelming –but it boggles my mind that all three of these
individuals chose class rather than race as their primary motivator, which is
the sort of thing that, if more white working class people do it, will go a
long way toward starting to dismantle that racial power structure.
People with “Archie Bunker Syndrome” are right, on one hand;
America’s changing demography does threaten their place on top of that hierarchy
of privilege. They are wrong, however, in fearing that or believing it to be a
bad thing. White Americans are not destined to become a persecuted minority, as
the O’Rileys and Buchanans would have us believe; not being “on top” does not
equal persecution (although, to those used to being on top, it might feel like
it.) No, White Americans will instead be the largest of several minority groups
who have to learn to cooperate.
I spent several years earning a Ph.D. in U.S. History, with
my primary focus being the study of race. I did this because I believe with all
my heart it is extremely important, and that by using education as a tool it
really is possible to one day dismantle the racial hierarchy in this country,
even though such a project would take generations.
For the first time, I am beginning to think I may see a
solid beginning to that project within my lifetime. I hope I am not proven wrong
–though if I am, it will only be a temporary setback in the grand scheme of
things.
For, as Dr. King told us, the arc of history may be long…
but it bends toward justice.
UPDATE: It is now five years since I wrote this essay. Donald Trump is president, and the KKK and neo-Nazis are emboldened by his policies. I still think things will change for the better, but there is a heck of a lot more work to be done than I thought in 2012.
Some of my previous blogs:
Also- my novel about race in the 19th century, winner of the Spur Award:
